Overlord

EPILOGUE

The conference room was silent as the department heads filed out. Niles Compton, looking like a smaller version of Senator Garrison Lee, sat with his head down as the six remaining men and women waited for the director to speak. The bandage covering Compton’s face was still in place, and a new black eye patch covered his right eye. The rest of the occupants were in no better shape than Niles.

Virginia Pollock wasn’t injured, but the dark circles under her eyes attested to the mental shape she was in since the night she came upon the slaughter at Chato’s Crawl. She had cried endlessly since that night. Alice Hamilton took her hand as her sobs escaped when she looked up and saw all of the empty seats around them.

“Did Anya Korvesky make it back safely to Tel Aviv?” Niles asked without looking up.

“Yes, I put her on the plane myself. She’s … she’s … well, she’s not taking the loss of Mr. Everett all that well,” Jason Ryan said from his new appointed place beside Jack Collins.

Niles nodded his head and then let out a breath.

Charlie Ellenshaw, with his eyes downcast, just stared at the polished table. He slowly shook his head, wincing slightly at the bullet wound to his back. He had been released from the hospital the day before and had been silent ever since. Gone were the silly comments and the quizzical looks. Now he was broken, saddened beyond measure. He swallowed and looked at the chair Pete Golding used to occupy. He slid his own chair back and slowly stood. He started to say something, but instead just turned and paced to the far wall and leaned his gray and disheveled hair against it. They saw his shoulders heaving as he cried for his lost friend.

“The president is speaking at the memorial in Arlington for…”

Niles removed the glasses that were only assisting one eye and stopped speaking. Alice wiped a tear away. She knew the director was blaming himself for the loss of Gus, Pete, Denise Gilliam, and Matchstick.

Jack Collins reached out and took the hand of Sarah McIntire, then he stood. He walked over to the far wall, brought over a tray of glasses and a large bottle of Kentucky bourbon, and placed it on the table. He then walked to the still crying Ellenshaw and guided him back to the table. He winked at Jason Ryan, who stood and poured out the whiskey. He even poured one for his friend Will Mendenhall, who was in New Zealand recovering from his extensive wounds, and one for a fugitive who was again on the run: Colonel Henri Farbeaux. He passed around the glasses and then waited for Jack.

“I once heard this in War College. I always knew what it meant, but never once did I think the words could ring so true.”

The men and women around the table stood with the exception of Niles Compton, who replaced his glasses and watched the recently demoted U.S. Army colonel raise his glass. The others followed suit.

“It was a quote from Robert E. Lee after the Battle of Gettysburg.”

Virginia couldn’t hold it in as the images of Gus, Pete, Denise, Carl, and Matchstick filled her memory. She placed a hand over her eyes and openly wept.

“We gather around our nightly dinner table and we see an occasional empty chair, but we are never, ever, prepared to see them all empty.” Jack looked from face to face, pausing at Virginia Pollock as she finally looked up with her glass in hand. “I want to say to each and every one of you, these chairs will never be empty, not as long as we remember those men and women who occupied them.” He raised his glass higher. “To absent friends.”

The others echoed the sentiment as the conference room door opened and an Air Force messenger in his blue jump suit entered carrying a message. He placed it before Compton and then quickly left.

Niles placed his glass on the table and retrieved the message. He read it and then handed it over to Alice Hamilton. She also perused it and then sat down as the others did also.

“It seems our contact inside the Vatican archives, code-named Goliath, has uncovered a rare find indeed. Our lieutenant has discovered an ancient map of an area inside the borders of the modern state of Georgia, the former Soviet Republic, depicting the possible resting place of an ancient artifact of legend.”

Niles smiled for the first time in weeks.

“Georgia — the old Soviet State that was once known to the Greeks as Colchis.”

Sarah looked at Alice with a question written on her face. Alice, instead of answering, turned to Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III to respond for her. Charlie cleared his throat as he placed his empty glass on the table.

“Colchis is the supposed resting place of a relic you may be familiar with. In the Argonautica, Appollonius Rhodius’s third-century BC epic poem about Jason and his Argonauts, Colchis was the home of the legendary Golden Fleece.”

“The Vatican hiding this map is at the very least intriguing,” Niles said. “Jack, would you get in touch with Goliath and request more information?”

Jack Collins looked from face to face of his remaining friends, took Sarah’s hand in his own, and nodded his head.

The group started talking about the impossibilities, the possibilities, and the way in which to discover the truth.

The closed doors of the conference room were no different than they were last year, or the year before that, and the year before that.

The thick oaken doors hid the secret Department 5656, also known as the Event Group, and it was now back to doing its job.